History of the British Raj

[6] The rush of technology was also changing the agricultural economy in India: by the last decade of the 19th century, a large fraction of some raw materials—not only cotton, but also some food-grains—were being exported to faraway markets.

Although famines were not new to the subcontinent, these were particularly severe, with tens of millions dying,[citation needed] and with many critics, both British and Indian, laying the blame at the doorsteps of the lumbering colonial administrations.

For example, Acemoglu et al. (2001) identify how the inability of certain areas of rural India to cope with disease and famine best explain this uneven development of the nation.

However, the majority of Indian society has experienced a negative impact of the British Raj, especially in rural and suburban areas, due to the focus of investment into transport such as railways and canals rather than into healthcare and primary education.

At the provincial level, the elected members, together with unofficial appointees, outnumbered the appointed officials, but responsibility of the governor to the legislature was not contemplated.

[10] It was to lead, among other things, to India, under its own name, becoming a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and participating, under the name, "Les Indes Anglaises" (The British Indies), in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.

In 1916, in the face of new strength demonstrated by the nationalists with the signing of the Lucknow Pact and the founding of the Home Rule leagues, and the realisation, after the disaster in the Mesopotamian campaign, that the war would likely last longer, the new Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, cautioned that the Government of India needed to be more responsive to Indian opinion.

[12] Towards the end of the year, after discussions with the government in London, he suggested that the British demonstrate their good faith – in light of the Indian war role – through a number of public actions, including awards of titles and honours to princes, granting of commissions in the army to Indians, and removal of the much-reviled cotton excise duty, but most importantly, an announcement of Britain's future plans for India and an indication of some concrete steps.

[12] The Rowlatt committee presented its report in July 1918 and identified three regions of conspiratorial insurgency: Bengal, the Bombay presidency, and the Punjab.

[19] The increased taxes coupled with disruptions in both domestic and international trade had the effect of approximately doubling the index of overall prices in India between 1914 and 1920.

[19] Returning war veterans, especially in the Punjab, created a growing unemployment crisis[20] and post-war inflation led to food riots in Bombay, Madras, and Bengal provinces,[20] a situation that was made only worse by the failure of the 1918–19 monsoon and by profiteering and speculation.

[18] Although the bills were authorised for legislative consideration by Edwin Montagu, they were done so unwillingly, with the accompanying declaration, "I loathe the suggestion at first sight of preserving the Defence of India Act in peace time to such an extent as Rowlatt and his friends think necessary.

[12] Even so, when it was passed the new Rowlatt Act aroused widespread indignation throughout India and brought Mohandas Gandhi to the forefront of the nationalist movement.

A greater number of Indians were now enfranchised, although, for voting at the national level, they constituted only 10% of the total adult male population, many of whom were still illiterate.

The principal of "communal representation", an integral part of the Minto–Morley Reforms, and more recently of the Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact, was reaffirmed, with seats being reserved for Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, and domiciled Europeans, in both provincial and Imperial legislative councils.

They were conducted according to the recommendation of Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the Viceroy Lord Irwin and the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald,[23][24] and by the report submitted by the Simon Commission in May 1930.

[25] In 1932 the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, after the failure of the three Round Table Conferences (India) in London, now confronted Gandhi's Congress in action.

It provided over 2 million soldiers, who fought numerous campaigns in the Middle East, and in the India-Burma front and also supplied billions of pounds to the British war effort.

[33][34][35] A major famine in eastern India led to hundreds of thousands of deaths by starvation, and remains a highly controversial issue regarding Churchill's reluctance to provide emergency food relief.

[37] The British sent a high level Cripps Mission in 1942 to secure Indian nationalists' co-operation in the war effort in exchange for postwar independence and dominion status.

Along with thousands of other Congress leaders, Gandhi was immediately imprisoned, and the country erupted in violent local episodes led by students and later by peasant political groups, especially in Eastern United Provinces, Bihar, and western Bengal.

[39] Ultimately, the British government realised that India was ungovernable in the long run, and the question for the postwar era became how to exit gracefully and peacefully.

In 1945, when the World War 2 had almost come to an end, the Labour Party of the United Kingdom won elections with a promise to provide independence to India.

[42] Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been ousted from the Congress Party in 1939 following differences with the more conservative high command,[43] turned to Germany and Japan for help with liberating India by force.

Japan's secret service had promoted unrest in Southeast Asia to destabilise the British war effort,[45] and came to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in regions under their occupation, such as those of Burma, the Philippines and Vietnam; similarly supported was the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India), presided over by Bose.

[59] In January 1946, a number of mutinies broke out in the armed services, starting with that of RAF servicemen frustrated with their slow repatriation to Britain.

Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946, Direct Action Day, with the stated goal of peacefully highlighting the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India.

With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence.

In the years leading up to the partition of India, the pro-separatist All-India Muslim League violently drove out Hindus and Sikhs from the western Punjab.

In Punjab, where the new border lines divided the Sikh regions in half, massive bloodshed followed; in Bengal and Bihar, where Gandhi's presence assuaged communal tempers, the violence was more limited.